Leutnant Anders
A Saturday evening dance in the village pub is interrupted when the barn of local farmer Paul Gäbler catches on fire. The farmer himself is soon found – hanged. Sawmill owner Züllich claims that Gäbler committed suicide because he was forced to join an agricultural production cooperative, but others are convinced Gäbler was murdered. Officers Schneider and Anders must navigate their way through a complex maze of personal and political motivations in order to reconstruct the crime.
Based on a one act play in five scenes by Wolfgang Borchert, "Draußen vor der Tür" depicts the return of a former German soldier from the Eastern Front, to post-WWII Germany and the sobering realities of de-nazification and "peacetime."